An estimate of the human mind Author:John Davies Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: formed and more cultivated intellects would have explained it, to them will only involve it in all the obscurity of an enigma. This allegation is lamentable, and... more » involves a censure on many an able, eloquent, and well-intentioned pulpit orator; but it is true. SECTION III. Imagination serviceable in the Formation of a lively and impressive Style. Another use to which Imagination may be advantageously converted in the treatment of divine truth, is, that it is calculated to afford great aid in the formation of a lively, forcible, and efficient style. Some there are, indeed, who reject all refinement and energy of language, and every species of decoration, arising from a skilful and well- arranged combination of words, as utterly unsuitable to the simple and unaffected majesty of Truth. To confirm their opinion upon this question, they refer with much confidence to one or two imperfectly understood and ill-applied passages of St. Paul, who declares to the polished and dissoluteCorinthians, that he came not to them in excellency of speech or of man's wisdom, — a phraseology importing no more than that the apostle did not calculate upon their conversion through the mere force of rhetoric, nor attempt to captivate their understand- ,. ing by strains of secular eloquence. But, that the prevailing style of St. Paul, viewed independently of that inspiration, under the influence of which it was formed, rose much above mediocrity, and frequently partook of the imaginative, is evident from the whole tenor of his epistles. It was, doubtless, no mean exhibition of oratorical talent, that could have led his hearers to take the apostle for the divinity, whose special office it was to preside over literature and eloquence. We fully agree with Chrysostom, in his Treatise concerning the prie...« less